IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/16637.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Stopping Suicide Attacks: Optimal Strategies and Unintended Consequences

Author

Listed:
  • Michael McBride
  • Gary Richardson

Abstract

Governments fighting terrorists have many tactical options, yet these options often yield unintended and counterproductive consequences. This paper models a terrorist organization, a religious group from which the terrorists recruit suicide bombers, and the society in which the terrorists are embedded. The model illuminates how the choice of anti-insurgent tactics influences the incidence of attacks, paying particular attention to the direct and indirect (unintended) consequences of the government's actions. The ultimate goal of this work is to identify the best way to stop terrorist attacks

Suggested Citation

  • Michael McBride & Gary Richardson, 2010. "Stopping Suicide Attacks: Optimal Strategies and Unintended Consequences," NBER Working Papers 16637, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16637
    Note: POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16637.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tilman Bruck, 2005. "An Economic Analysis Of Security Policies," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(5), pages 375-389.
    2. Efraim Benmelech & Claude Berrebi, 2007. "Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 223-238, Summer.
    3. Alan B. Krueger & Jitka Maleckova, 2003. "Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 119-144, Fall.
    4. Laurence Iannaccone & Eli Berman, 2006. "Religious extremism: The good, the bad, and the deadly," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 109-129, July.
    5. Kydd, Andrew & Walter, Barbara F., 2002. "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 56(2), pages 263-296, April.
    6. Ethan Bueno De Mesquita, 2005. "The Quality of Terror," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 515-530, July.
    7. Berrebi Claude, 2007. "Evidence about the Link Between Education, Poverty and Terrorism among Palestinians," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-38, December.
    8. Joao Ricardo Faria & Daniel Arce, 2005. "Terror Support And Recruitment," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 263-273.
    9. Michael D. Intriligator, 2010. "The Economics Of Terrorism," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 1-13, January.
    10. Arce, Daniel G. & Sandler, Todd, 2007. "Terrorist Signalling and the Value of Intelligence," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(4), pages 573-586, October.
    11. Berman, Eli & Laitin, David D., 2008. "Religion, terrorism and public goods: Testing the club model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 1942-1967, October.
    12. Claude Berrebi & Darius Lakdawalla, 2007. "How Does Terrorism Risk Vary Across Space And Time? An Analysis Based On The Israeli Experience," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 113-131.
    13. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger, "undated". "How to Fight Terrorism: Alternatives to Deterrence," IEW - Working Papers 137, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    14. Eli Berman, 2003. "Hamas, Taliban and the Jewish Underground: An Economist's View of Radical Religious Militias," NBER Working Papers 10004, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01bk1289895 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Daniel G. Arce & Todd Sandler, 2010. "Terrorist Spectaculars: Backlash Attacks and the Focus of Intelligence," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 54(2), pages 354-373, April.
    17. Iannaccone, Laurence R, 1992. "Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 271-291, April.
    18. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita & Eric S. Dickson, 2007. "The Propaganda of the Deed: Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Mobilization," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(2), pages 364-381, April.
    19. Sandler, Todd & Arce, Daniel G., 2007. "Terrorism: A Game-Theoretic Approach," Handbook of Defense Economics, in: Keith Hartley & Todd Sandler (ed.), Handbook of Defense Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 25, pages 775-813, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Noury, Abdul G. & Speciale, Biagio, 2016. "Social constraints and women's education: Evidence from Afghanistan under radical religious rule," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 821-841.
    2. Scott Helfstein, 2014. "Social capital and terrorism," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 363-380, August.
    3. Siqueira, Kevin & Arce, Daniel, 2020. "Terrorist training: Onsite or via the Internet?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    4. João Ricardo Faria & Daniel Arce, 2012. "Counterterrorism And Its Impact On Terror Support And Recruitment: Accounting For Backlash," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(5), pages 431-445, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sandeep Baliga & Tomas Sjostrom, 2012. "The Strategy of Manipulating Conflict," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2897-2922, October.
    2. Friedrich Schneider & Tilman Brück & Daniel Meierrieks, 2010. "The Economics of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: A Survey (Part II)," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1050, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Anderton,Charles H. & Carter,John R., 2009. "Principles of Conflict Economics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521875578, December.
    4. Berman, Eli & Laitin, David D., 2008. "Religion, terrorism and public goods: Testing the club model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 1942-1967, October.
    5. Efraim Benmelech & Claude Berrebi, 2007. "Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 223-238, Summer.
    6. Klor, Esteban & Berrebi, Claude & Benmelech, Efraim, 2010. "Economic Conditions and the Quality of Suicide Terrorism," CEPR Discussion Papers 7995, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Noury, Abdul G. & Speciale, Biagio, 2016. "Social constraints and women's education: Evidence from Afghanistan under radical religious rule," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 821-841.
    8. Jaeger, David A. & Klor, Esteban F. & Miaari, Sami H. & Paserman, M. Daniele, 2012. "The struggle for Palestinian hearts and minds: Violence and public opinion in the Second Intifada," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 354-368.
    9. Travers B. Child & David Scoones, 2017. "Community preferences, insurgency, and the success of reconstruction spending," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 34-52, January.
    10. Eric D. Gould & Esteban F. Klor, 2010. "Does Terrorism Work?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1459-1510.
    11. Bandyopadhyay, Subhayu & Sandler, Todd, 2023. "Voluntary participation in a terror group and counterterrorism policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 500-513.
    12. El-Attar, Mayssun, 2009. "Could Education Promote the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process?," IZA Discussion Papers 4447, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. James T. Bang & Atin Basuchoudhary & Aniruddha Mitra, 2021. "Validating Game-Theoretic Models of Terrorism: Insights from Machine Learning," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-20, June.
    14. Jaeger, David A. & Klor, Esteban F. & Miaari, Sami H. & Paserman, M. Daniele, 2012. "The struggle for Palestinian hearts and minds: Violence and public opinion in the Second Intifada," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(3), pages 354-368.
    15. Kis-Katos, Krisztina & Liebert, Helge & Schulze, Günther G., 2014. "On the heterogeneity of terror," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 116-136.
    16. Friedrich Schneider & Tilman Brück & Daniel Meierrieks, 2015. "The Economics Of Counterterrorism: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 131-157, February.
    17. Jan Schnellenbach, 2006. "Appeasing nihilists? Some economic thoughts on reducing terrorist activity," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 301-313, December.
    18. Makowsky, Michael, 2009. "Religious Extremism, Clubs, and Civil Liberties: A Model of Religious Populations," MPRA Paper 14358, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Freytag, Andreas & Krüger, Jens J. & Meierrieks, Daniel & Schneider, Friedrich, 2011. "The origins of terrorism: Cross-country estimates of socio-economic determinants of terrorism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(S1), pages 5-16.
    20. David A. Jaeger & M. Daniele Paserman, 2008. "The Cycle of Violence? An Empirical Analysis of Fatalities in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1591-1604, September.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16637. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.